As the world community follows the information boom, there are more and more software services and information repositories that are being provided in languages other than English. Consequently, content providers and software providers have established a world-wide customer base. For the most part the information or software services that are provided to an English customer base are no different than what is needed for different world-wide customer base. However, one significant distinction is the new need to provide existing information and existing software services in different languages so as to be understood by the different world-wide customers.
One problem associated with providing information or services in multiple languages is versioning control and management. Conventionally, a plurality of parties is needed to manage and distribute information or services in a plurality of languages. Many of these parties are also geographically dispersed across the globe, which makes sense because often translators for a given language are best found and located in their native countries. Each party may have its own document management or inventory control system for the information that each party produces. Thus, it can be seen that this is a complex and expensive management task, which can be potentially distributed across the entire globe.
Moreover, even when a decent approach is employed by an enterprise for language translation and management that approach can rapidly break down in a dynamic environment. For example, consider information that is frequently modified, when a modification occurs each translated version of the information has to be updated and synchronized with the modified version. This can entail a lot of manual coordination, which must comport with different world-wide time zones and different world-wide work schedules. Further, this work may be needed each time the information is changed. Also, in some environments the information may change in any of the supported languages, which can compound the management problem even further.
As a result, product releases may have to be put on different world-wide schedules in order for an enterprise to maintain revenue streams. That is, an English version of a product may go out months in advance of a Japanese version of the product. Enterprises would prefer to release at one synchronized date and time, but that goal appears unreachable or impractical in view of the effort needed to acquire and synchronize language translations for a product release.
Thus, it can be seen that improved language translation and management techniques are desirable in a global economy.